A River Runs Through It

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” – Norman Maclean

Lake, Angel Wing and Glacier where the story begins and ends

Water is the earth’s blood, carried through veins called rivers into the ocean which is the Earth’s heart. Some philosophers claim that the human mind is not held within the brain, but within the blood. So, too, perhaps the mind of the Earth can be found within water. We are, I think, in large part defined by how we view water, how we treat it, respect it, drink it, conserve it, and find beauty in all it reflects.

“Don’t you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it’s in the sea, and it’s homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.” -  Zora Neale Hurston

Sarabande is carried, nourished and purified by water because rivers run through this novel in reality and in symbol. The word “river” appears in Sarabande 428 times because water is feminine element and symbolic of journeys and the unconscious and the movement of everything, including earth itself, from place to place.

While Billy spoke softly about the ancient ice, builder of the Prairie Pothole Region of the Great Plains that encompassed the Sandhills where the Great Mystery flew with pelicans and cormorants, water, the menstrual blood of the Goddess, carried Sarabande away, and she dreamt of a river.

When you stand at the summit of Triple Divide Mountain in Montana’s Glacier National Point, you can pour a cup of water there that will flow in part toward the Pacific Ocean, Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. As I wrote Sarabande, I found myself very conscious of water, where it came from, and where it went. Some of the water begins its journey in the glacier that lies along the continental divide beneath a spur of rock called the Angel Wing, and that is where the novel begins.

Missouri

When Sarabande is assaulted near a creek—an actual creek that flows beneath U. S. Highway 2 in Montana—the water flowing past her damaged self begins its journey in the high country and much of it ends up in the Mni Sose (the Lakota name for the Missouri).  Sarabande follows that water in both reality and imagination.

There was sadness in Mni Sose’s song, but not resignation, as she felt the waters coming closer and merging nearby with the water that poured out of the glacier beneath the Angel Wing and flowed eastward across the plains on a winding course.

Later, when Sarabande and Robert Adams leave central Illinois, their great black horse carries them over the Sangamon River where I waded as a child and where Robert floated on a raft. Robert tells her that the name Sangamon comes from those called the “Keepers of the Fire” and means Good Earth.

Sikimí aimed for the water, splattering clouds and water upward into a towering spray when his back legs struck the Sangamon of the good earth and created a rolling wake. As the wake engulfed the boat, Dohver yelled at them, demanding, imploring, and warning. He shouted, “Return to Fairview Park or you will die in the Garden of Heaven.” Then the boat tipped over in Sikimí’s wake. When Dohver fell, Sikimí leapt into the low clouds, changed course, and the river fell away into a quilt of corn, oats, and narrow roads.

Sangamon

In ther later chapters of the novel, important scenes are set next to a Glacier Park river whose name I have fictionalized into The River of Sky. This river was the scene of an important battle in The Sun Singer. During that battle, Sarabande killed her sister Dryad in self defence and that is what led to the ghost that haunted my protagonist at the beginning of Sarbande.

Apí’si shouted at her telepathically and with a voice while she was saying the words “Arch of Time” and feeling the pull of the wind. Apí’si’s high-pitched barking tore into her heart as a warning and a goodbye, followed quickly by a wet tongue in her face. Instinctively, she hugged her Coyote sister just as time and winds wrenched her free of the river’s soft arms.

Sarabande’s story is a circle, and she is carried by blood and water from start to finish because a river runs through it.  Listen, you can hear the voice of the Earth from the sound of rain and surf and splashing fish and waterfalls.

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” – Loren Eiseley

–Malcolm

Advertisement